


up and down and barely made it over

by cosmicwritings



Series: sharing beds like little kids [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Family Dynamics, Sibling Bonding, Weasley Family-centric (Harry Potter), Wizarding Wars (Harry Potter), mentions of grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-11-02 04:53:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20627945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicwritings/pseuds/cosmicwritings
Summary: "Bill’s story is always going to be an ode to his parents’ love story, because they were still writing it when he was born. He watched them finish it for the rest of his life. Bill was so many things, but he was always full of love. He said the words I love you easily, to almost everyone. To his parents, to his brothers, to his sister, to his friends. To his first girlfriend and to his first boyfriend, and every person he had consequently even had the fleeting feeling for, because Bill had been raised not to be afraid of those words. Bill had been raised with watching his mother and father say the same words to each other ten times a day."or a bill weasley character study.





	up and down and barely made it over

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY hello i want to say! right off the bat! this is actually the start of a new series i'm doing. i'm aiming to write seven character studies in this series of each of the weasley siblings - so this is the first installation, my boy bill !!! i'm marking this as a complete one-shot thing but if i find muse to continue a part 2 of bill's character study, i'll add an extra chapter ! i kinda want to do a post war one, focused on him and his kids, but i set myself a Task of doing each of the weasleys first so we'll see djfghdfj pls suscribe to the series and this fic if you like it!!! and leave a comment i'm a sucker for validation
> 
> idk if you could tell bc it's a rlly subtle thing, but i was kind of trying a new style of writing as well? lmfaO whatever also!!! i didn't put fleur's accent in her speech bc i can't do it so jdfghd i'm also the oldest child of a bunch of siblings! i got u bill i GOT YOU anyways hit me up on tumblr @blaisezabini !!!
> 
> title from rollercoaster by the jonas brothers ! i love outing my music taste through fic titles

In the year of 1970, November 29th is exactly twenty-three days after the Ministry declared an official war against Lord Voldemort.

It’s also the day William Arthur Weasley is born to a pair of twenty-year-olds, flushed from a shotgun marriage.

Molly and Arthur Weasley had spent the entire pregnancy excited and preparing for their first child; his full name had been picked out as soon as Molly had passed the first trimester, had scrimped every single penny they could to buy that two-bedroom farmhouse in St. Ottery Catchpole. Bill was an accident baby, brown eyes and a shock of red hair, and they had gotten married in a rush because of it, but Molly Prewett and Arthur Weasley were very much in love and had been since their fourth year at Hogwarts. Anyone who knew of them knew they were going to make it.

Bill just sped up the process a little, and – Yeah. The war, as well. But mostly Bill.

There were many things that shaped him into who he was. First and foremost, he had been an older brother for as long as he could remember, had been a good child, had by nature wanted to be the best he could be for his parents. Bill had a good heart. Bill shocked every person he ever met, because it was hard to fathom that someone could be kind and generous and polite and smart and responsible and sensible and _cool_ all at once.

One of the things that shaped him, though, was that he’s always only ever seen how in love his parents were.

Molly and Arthur were twenty years old when they got married and had their first accidental baby. They had been out of Hogwarts for two years. They had been together the entire time for seven years. Molly and Arthur had been friends before getting together in fourth year, and they had been friends before they came to Hogwarts too, pureblood families always knowing each other. They’d been orbiting each other their entire lives, and destiny had plaited their fate lines together. Molly was always going to be Molly Prewett, but she was always going to be Molly Weasley too.

They were still twenty years old when Bill was born, so he got to see his parents be silly things in their young twenties, trying to figure out how to balance a life with children and still being so ridiculously, giddily in love. Seven years does not mean the novelty wore off. Age had not taken the time to mellow them out just yet. They were living in the same house together for the first time. They were learning what the difference was between being married and just dating (the answer was: not much). Arthur pressed a kiss to his wife’s head every day for the rest of his life before he headed out for work, but twenty-year-old Arthur was still taking her by the hand to dance clumsily in their living room, with only baby Bill as a witness. Molly always made too much food in worry that Arthur wasn’t eating enough (or simply knowing he’d get distracted and forget to eat lunch), but she still let him call her embarrassing nicknames loudly around a near-empty house that was all theirs. They weren’t kids anymore, but they were barely older than that.

Bill watched the stable unit that were his parents his whole life, from when they were young and fumbling to wearier with age, and that was important.

Bill’s story is always going to be an ode to his parents’ love story, because they were still writing it when he was born. He watched them finish it for the rest of his life. Bill was so many things, but he was always full of love. He said the words _I love you_ easily, to almost everyone. To his parents, to his brothers, to his sister, to his friends. To his first girlfriend and to his first boyfriend, and every person he had consequently even had the fleeting feeling for, because Bill had been raised not to be afraid of those words. Bill had been raised with watching his mother and father say the same words to each other ten times a day.

He remembers saying the words to his girlfriend at fifteen years old, and she had reared her head back in shock.

“I’m not saying it to hear it back,” Bill had explained, but it was pointless. She was already scrunching up her nose. “I felt it. I thought you should know.”

She had broken up with him anyway, and another man might’ve let that change him, but things like love were a very important matter to him.

* * *

Bill was also old enough to witness the start, the climax, the end and the aftermath of the first Wizarding war. He was the only one out of the seven who saw the very beginning, even if he was too young to realise it. He was the only one who really understood, because the others were all too young, apart from maybe Charlie. But Charlie didn’t care much for war, had always been soft and was confused easily, so it was Bill who saw the darkness and the fear when he was still in single-digits.

When he started Hogwarts, he was the first year of students that came through those castle walls after the war had officially ended. They were the first set of kids who were not looking for refuge from a terrifying mass murderer, but coming here to learn and to _be_ a kid for the first time in about a decade. Three years earlier, James and Lily Potter graduated from their final year. Three years earlier, James and Lily Potter had been alive and fighting in a war as children, and they had been _alive_.

Bill did not have to spend his seven years at Hogwarts, thinking about a wartime. Bill was allowed to be a kid again, was allowed to find friends and have horrible breakups and kiss people in empty classrooms. He was allowed to learn defensive spells for no other reason that for extra caution, he could turn goblets into mice and fly on a broomstick.

When Defence Against the Dark Arts became Bill’s best subject, it was not because he was thinking about how it would help him fight in a war. It was because he liked it and it was something he was good at, nothing more and nothing less.

He could count on one hand exactly how many people he didn’t get on with, and that was not a boast, only the truth. People generally liked Bill. He was easy-going, he had a good head on his shoulders, he became a Prefect and Head Boy and miraculously was not a snitch whilst holding both positions. He actually listened in History of Magic. He took back twelve OWLs to his mother, and he was proud of himself, even it was expected.

He got on well with people because Bill Weasley was exactly what he said he was. He was uncomplicated and open. When he said something, he meant it.

Professor McGonagall had picked him for Gryffindor’s Prefect in his fifth year because of how well he got on with people. He kept them grounded and he could reel the house of the reckless in when he needed to.

She recommended him to Dumbledore, too, when it came to choose a Head Boy for his seventh year. Bill would not be a tyrant with the power. Bill would be a good example and he would put his foot down if needed, but he was laid-back. Bill’s authority would not be the same as previous Head Boys.

“Maybe a change is what we need,” McGonagall had said, and yes, maybe she did really like Bill Weasley. He was a good boy. He worked hard. But she’d also just taught the last decade of students who were graduating into a world of war, so sue her for being a little soft.

Here’s the strange thing: Bill felt no pressure. He did not feel he was going to let himself down if he didn’t get those OWLs, he was not thinking of whether his mother would be upset with him if he was passed over for that Prefect badge. Molly and Arthur had raised him to be a good man who worked hard, but they were not expecting him to be the best. They had only wanted a good son, which they got. Bill just really liked to learn, to know things and find out more. He liked studying probably because he was good at it, but there was something satisfying about building up your knowledge.

It’s why he chooses to go into the curse-breaking path, had even laughed when his mother puts her face in her hands when he tells her. He could learn so much doing that. He would be good at it too, sure, but he’d learn a lot about new things in an active job.

“Don’t you want a Ministry job like your father?” Molly had asked between the fingers of her hands hopefully, but Bill was not going to be satisfied with that.

He’d almost asked his parents if they wanted him to stay behind and help out with the kids, when he’s offered a position in Egypt. But he knows they’ll be okay.

After all, he turned out fine.

* * *

And to talk about Bill is to talk about his siblings. That is not to say that any of the others do not value their family, because they do, every single one of them have a bond like gel that ties the whole Weasley clan together, but a lot of who Bill was is being an older brother. Moreso when he was younger and trying to his best, moreso before he had left to Egypt and finding a more solid place for himself, but he’s a family-orientated person. He always will be.

He hadn’t felt a responsibility in upholding some sort of reputation for his family in Hogwarts; all of the good grades and good name had been his, they were for him mostly. But he felt a responsibility to his siblings. Bill loved fiercely, sure, but his love was all about building a relationship, maintaining it. People were not cookie cut-outs for one’s love. All love is different, and that doesn’t make it worse or better – only just that: different.

When they were a lot younger, and even now as a joke, the other six would fight over who was Bill’s favourite. Arthur loved them equally and Molly claimed to do the same (although they all knew she had a soft spot for Percy), but everyone wanted to be Bill’s favourite. For a long time, when Ginny was younger, he’d tell them it was her and she rubbed it in the others’ faces for as long as possible.

(After her first year of Hogwarts, Bill comes back from Egypt for the entire summer for her. He does not push her to talk like their mother does, nor force her to be back to her old self like the others are encouraging. He is just there for her. He doesn’t know what to do when a ghost steals a bit of your sister’s soul for an entire year, but he tries.)

But, really, Charlie was Bill’s best friend, when it all came down to it. It doesn’t matter if Charlie wouldn’t say the same about him. When he gets married, he has Charlie standing by his side because, of all the people in his life, he can’t really imagine anyone else but him there. It does not matter that they rarely see each other, Charlie in Romania and Bill in Egypt until recently. It does not matter if there were four oceans and three continents between them in the future, because Charlie is an integral part of Bill that he can’t really explain to anyone else who doesn’t have a sibling less than two years younger than them. This is a different bond. This is an important bond.

He sends a letter across the ocean to tell Charlie that he wants to Floo-call him. He has to tell Charlie in advance so Charlie can get to a fireplace.

“You’re getting married,” Charlie says as soon as he appears in the flames. “Fleur, wasn’t her name?”

Charlie’s absent-minded with names, forgets them easily, and Bill grins. “How did you know?”

“It was either that or you’re pregnant,” Charlie explains, and then pauses. “She’s not pregnant, is she?”

“No.”

“Oh, good, Mum’ll be more bearable,” Charlie says with a grin.

“Will you be my best man?” The question falls out, dropping into the fire word-by-word. Bill watches Charlie’s eyebrows raise.

“Yeah, of course,” he says. His hands appear as he presses them to his eyes. “I’m not crying over you. A dragon gave birth yesterday.”

For a long time, Bill is the only one who understands him the most, he knows that. When Charlie’s two years old and surrounded by Weasley cousins who are screaming and clamouring around them, Molly and Arthur don’t understand how to deal with him covering his ears and crying. They don’t really understand his fixation on dragons either, or his fingers always fidgeting with something, or his odd questions. They don’t quite know what to do, and maybe Bill really doesn’t either, but Bill tries the most and that’s enough. Bill always tries. He answers every single one of Charlie’s questions and gets him out of large crowds and does not laugh when he cries.

He writes a letter home three times a week for the first term at Hogwarts, because he wants Charlie to know he’s missing him.

“How was Hogwarts?” Charlie asks him that first Christmas back. There’s no resentment there.

“Better if you were there,” Bill promises, and he’s not lying.

When Charlie moves to Romania, Bill makes an effort to visit him there at least once a year, no matter what’s going on. Charlie is Bill’s brother, yes, but he’s also his best friend. It’s not that either is a more important title, only that both are there.

And, out of all six siblings, he’s the one who gets on best with Percy, too.

When Percy leaves after that terrible, terrible fight, Bill still sends him an invitation to his wedding. Because family is still family, is always family. That’s Bill’s biggest thing. Percy did and said awful things, and Bill’s not quite ready to forgive him yet for the way he’s treated them all, but he still wants him there.

Percy likes Bill the most out of them. This is not a secret. He has said so multiple times over his entire life; when Fred and George play another prank on him, when Ron is making fun of him, when Ginny is batting off his attempts of looking after her. Bill is the most similar to him at the crux of it, with his good grades and ambitions, but then again, that’s not all Bill is. Bill puts family first. People actually like Bill, and no one ever really likes Percy. When Bill goes to Egypt, Percy never really admits it, but he misses him, because at least when Bill was here, it was not four against one (Charlie never counted, never took sides).

Bill has a lot of faith in family, even if he lost a little bit in Percy, but he’d hoped that was enough for Percy to come to see him get married.

(It was not.)

But that’s okay. He knows Fleur would’ve held him that night when he cries a little out of disappointment, had the Death Eaters not shown up unannounced. Fleur understands the importance of family to him, knows the same devotion because Bill has seen it every time she talks about her little sister. That day in the Triwizarding tournament, they had taken two champions’ girlfriends and one best friend. They had taken Fleur’s little sister as her most precious thing, and Bill likes to think that they would’ve probably taken Charlie had he been in that position.

Actually, Bill knows the exact order in which Dumbledore would’ve chosen to render the most important people of his life unconscious for him to retrieve. If not Charlie, they would’ve taken Ginny, because he’s alarmingly protective over her, but they would’ve gone through every single one of his siblings before they’d have to start thinking about taking anyone else.

(Bill has friends. Bill has many friends, but none of them, not for a second, even reaches the level he’s put all his siblings on. Kirley Duke and Myron Wagtail are two of his closest friends, they still send him free tickets to their Weird Sisters concerts to this day, but they weren’t exactly reliable. Tonks was Charlie’s friend first, but she and Bill have their own special bond now, and she’s important to him, she is. But nothing still tops his brothers and sister.)

Except Bill doesn’t really have time to mourn over the fact that one of his brothers wouldn’t even turn up to his wedding, even if, yes, it was in the middle of a wartime. He feels a bit like his parents like this, falling in love in the height of another war. Getting married because he’s so _sure_. This is the second war Bill is going to live through. The first time, he’d been young enough to suck on his own thumb and not do much else. This time, he’s going to help do the right thing, because really, there’s not a doubt in his mind that that’s what he needs to do. Even if his parents didn’t decide to join the Order of the Phoenix this time around. Bill always does the right thing.

And so, he trades tombs in Egypt for a desk job at Gringotts. Which is okay, even if not what he wanted. Things are still interesting enough for him and he’s got the best relationship with goblins out of his colleagues, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t mostly taken this job because he wants to be with his family at a time like this. There’s going to be a war, and he’s already volunteered himself up for it, but he needs to know his family are going to be okay too.

It’s where he meets his wife, anyway, so it’s not _all_ bad.

“I noticed you back when you came to support Harry at the Tournament,” she says to him, on their first date. She said she took a temporary job at Gringotts to improve her English and Bill believes her.

“Did you really?” he says, surprise in a way that mimics his father. It’s just – he knows he’s good-looking. Not arrogance, just truth. But he’d been focusing on Harry, at the time, and his family. He noticed the pretty Champion, but in the same way one noticed the sky is clear today.

“I noticed the way you were with your sister. Ginny, isn’t it?” and Bill smiles, the way he automatically does at the mention of Ginny. Fleur smiles too, and it’s a much different smile than what he’s been seeing as he passes her at work. It’s softer. It’s more understanding. It’s real. He’s ten years older than Ginny and Fleur is eleven years older than Gabrielle. “Yeah. See.”

Bill falls in love with Fleur quickly enough that it worries his mother. He knows Molly doesn’t particularly like Fleur, the same way he knows his father is happy he’s found someone, knows Charlie has yet to meet her but will like her anyway, knows Fred and George think it’s typical he’s bagged a Veela, knows Ron is tongue-tied in front of her all the time, knows Ginny hates her. Knows Percy would probably warn him about being careful and whatever, but Percy isn’t here and hasn’t ever met her so.

Molly has the subtly of a brick, and her casual hints about what a wonderful woman Tonks is isn’t half as convincing as she thinks it is. Bill likes Tonks, thinks she’s funny and maybe one of the best things to happen to Charlie and has gotten closer to over the years. But Bill can’t shake the feeling of seeing her as a sister, and neither can Tonks, he knows. Tonks is brilliant and smart and bright-eyed, and a much better fit for Remus than Bill could ever be.

Ginny joins in after a while, adding things like, “Tonks was so funny last night at dinner, wasn’t she? I wish she was around for dinner every night.”

So does Bill, but that doesn’t mean he wants to marry her.

He asks Fleur if he wants to tell his mother to stop, but Fleur laughs and says that there’s no need. She’s confident in their love, and that makes Bill glad – with all the space in his heart for his family, they haven’t been the most welcoming to Fleur. He thinks that might be one of his most favourite things about her. Not that she doesn’t really care what anyone else thinks (except, yeah, also that), but that she’s just as confident in their love as he is. He doesn’t know if he could be with someone who is only half-in or doesn’t quite believe they’ll make it. Bill doesn’t hold himself back, has always been honest and upfront and simple. Bill meant the things he said. If he’s going to choose someone to spend the rest of his life with, he’s going to choose someone who’s just as happy to put it all out there too.

And he has faith in his family. He fell in love with Fleur because of her depth, because she cares so much it makes him blink sometimes. She’s passionate and brave and fiercely, fiercely loyal. She’s choosing to fight a war she does not need to be a part of. She moved to England during perhaps one of the worst times she could, but she did it anyway. Of all her complaints, she fell in love with this country. She fell in love with Bill and she’s staying here because of it.

He fell in love with all these things about Fleur, and he knows the rest will see it too. Molly just wants to make sure he’s in a happy relationship, not throwing everything away because Fleur is tall and beautiful. She thinks Fleur is playing some sort of game, with the handsome boy who looks a little dangerous, but Bill knows that when she sees the love there, she will be okay.

Ginny hates Fleur, and that hurts Bill more than knowing his mother isn’t confident in his marriage. Ginny hates Fleur and thinks she’s silly and airy and ridiculous. Ginny hates Fleur, and it’s not because Fleur is pretty, but because it’s a different pretty to her. Fleur is mostly everything Ginny strips herself away of; Fleur is someone Ginny might’ve been more similar to, had Tom Riddle not sucked a bit of her soul out when she was eleven. These days, Ginny is a teenage girl, but she’s still angry and fights with her fists, just as much as her wand. Ginny sees Fleur batting her eyelashes, or doing a very deliberate type of walk, or spending a lot of time in front of the mirror to check her appearance. She sees the type of girl that Ginny hadn’t let herself be, all those years ago, before she’d even hit puberty. She sees the type of girl that was almost her, the type of girl that let her look like a victim when a ghost in a diary asked about her love life.

It’s the same reason she dislikes Lavender Brown, Parvati Patil, and all those other girls at Hogwarts, who were letting themselves be young and silly, when Ginny hadn’t allowed herself cry since she was eleven. Ginny hates pretty, vain, catty, snobby Fleur, but that’s not all Fleur is.

Bill doesn’t tell Ginny to be nicer to Fleur, because he knows she will come around. Fleur doesn’t really mind, she tells him, and Bill can see that she likes Ginny a lot more than Ginny could ever like her. Ginny is still young and angry at the world, but Bill also knows Ginny is fierce with her love and insightful as hell and has a good heart. When she sees Fleur and does not see everything she hates, she will see the things Bill fell in love with. Really, Ginny’s more similar to Fleur than she thinks, but he knows she will hit him if he tells her that. He will give her time instead.

* * *

Fleur is beautiful and Bill is a good-looking boy. He knows this. He was not a vain man, but he knows this.

When Dumbledore called for him to help patrol Hogwarts the night he died, Bill had said yes. He made that choice. He signed up for the Order of the Phoenix because he was always going to do the right thing.

It’s not a stroke of bad luck or coincidence that he was attacked that night. He was there to protect the school and that is what he did.

(He’d much rather it be him that anyone else that night. The castle of all those hundreds of students – he was an adult now. He was twenty-five years old. Greyback could have all of him if it meant he didn’t touch a hair on any of the students’ head.

He thinks about Ron, just turned seventeen years old and fighting back. He thinks about Ginny, not even sixteen yet, wand raised against Greyback. Thinks about the way Greyback looked at his baby sister and clenches his fist.)

Later, when he wakes up, the very first thing he notices is the way Fleur and Molly are clutching at each other, like they’re afraid to let go. Only this morning did Molly sniff loudly when Fleur complained about the heaviness of English bread at breakfast.

He’s in so much pain, it’s almost blinding, even though he can feel himself drugged up on Pain Potions. His face feels incredibly itchy, and he will raise his hand to try and scratch at it in a moment, feeling the scars for the first time. But right now, his mother and his fiancé are finally okay with each other, and that kind of almost makes up for everything.

But then McGonagall says, “Dumbledore’s gone.”

And the world is still falling apart.

* * *

Bill knows he has faith in their love, and he also knows Fleur has faith in their love, but he still has to ask her. He still has to offer her the way out.

He’s watching her cook his steak, a little too bloody for it to be anyone else’s, and he breathes. She has her back to him, humming a French song. Something swells in his heart, the kind of love so full he’s experienced his whole life.

Some mornings, ever since that night on the Astronomy Tower, he wakes up with a wolf in his chest. Something screaming and trying to claw its way out. It terrifies him, the first few times, waking up with a monster stuck inside him, Fleur sleeping peacefully beside him.

They said he was not a full werewolf, but there might be tendencies. They were referring to liking his meat rawer and the scars on his face.

On full moons, Bill does not transform, but he is antsy. Nothing about his personality changes; he is still the easy-going, sensible man he has always been. But they didn’t tell him that the wolf in his chest weighs him down some days, heavy and heavier. In the streets, people flinch at his torn face, and Bill wonders what they would act like if they knew about that gnawing feeling inside him.

Fleur’s hip pops in time to the song she’s humming, wand flicking to flip the pan.

“Fleur,” he says, and she turns around. “You don’t have to –”

The words get caught in his throat, breaks off with a growl he doesn’t mean to make. Fleur turns the stove off and moves closer, until she’s at an arm-length away from him and he can reach for her, if he’d like. He doesn’t.

She waits until he finishes.

“You don’t have to marry me. This isn’t – You didn’t sign up for any of this, and I will not blame you if you walk away.”

There’s a pause. “Sometimes,” she says at last, in her heavily accented English, “you are a very stupid man.”

She takes another step forward, and he reaches out this time, arms wrapping around her middle as he buries her face into her clothes.

“I told your mother when you were lying in that hospital bed: these scars do not change a single thing.”

“It’s not about what it changes or doesn’t,” he explains, voice muffled. “You don’t have to. You don’t have to deal with this.”

“_Deal_ with it?” she repeats, aghast. Her fingernails are long and painted and sinking into his shoulders as her grip tightens. “I am marrying you because I love you. You, of all people, know the loyalty that comes with that.”

He does. He does.

When Ron comes back for a place to stay, having left Harry and Hermione in an unknown woods hundreds of miles away, Bill lets him, because he is his brother. He isn’t happy with his decision, but Ron’s always battled his own demons and spends the time at Shell Cottage desperately thinking of ways to get back.

* * *

Bill grows his hair long because he likes how it looks. He gets his ear pierced and then puts a fang in them because he likes how it looks. He wears ripped clothes and dragon-hide boots because he likes how it looks.

His mother doesn’t, but she doesn’t get to decide these things for him, no matter how much he loves her. These things are his.

And there are a lot of things now that are his. This little cottage by the seaside. Lying in bed on Sunday mornings and hearing his kids arguing over breakfast in the next room over. His wife trying to teach them all French.

Lavender Brown, Ron’s ex-girlfriend (Ginny has always kept him up with gossip, even her own, when she wouldn’t tell her other brothers), comes to visit him timidly. She’d written to him years after Ron asked if he could pass his contact information onto her, and when she did, Bill invites her to dinner.

“I don’t really –” Words get muddled in Lavender’s mouth for a moment, and Victoire is sitting on her lap, babbling nonsense. Bill doesn’t push, because Bill never pushes. He only continues chopping the vegetables. “There’s not. There’s not a lot of us, you know.”

_Not quite werewolves_, she means, but Bill understands. At dinner, Fleur pushes more meat onto Lavender’s plate in between feeding Victoire, the kind of motherly aggressiveness that Bill sees in his own mother all the time.

Bill Weasley settles down back in his home country, surrounded by a new family and his old family. Works his desk job at Gringotts, but it’s okay this time because he really likes coming home to his own house. He likes being within flying distance to go check up on Percy, who is still swallowing his guilt years later, who is grateful that Bill is the first after their parents to welcome him back into the fold of their complicated, funny, loving family. Likes being able to see George and make sure he’s eating, getting out of bed, living a life he now has to live alone. Likes watching Ron and Ginny find a place in the world without being the front lines of war.

“George says he forgives me, but I’m not sure if I ever want him to,” Percy says once, stretched out on Bill’s couch for the night.

Bill’s hands are always steady, but they shake when he thinks about Fred. He hands Percy a beer and opens one for himself. He says, “Don’t be daft.”

“I should’ve died instead –”

He doesn’t get to finish his sentence because Bill leans forward and clips him around the head sharply. Percy’s head jerks forwards, glasses going askew, but Bill is already taking another long gulp.

“Don’t you dare say things like that,” Bill says calmly. Percy’s mouth shuts. “It shouldn’t have been any of us. We miss him, we all will always miss him, but we’d have missed you too.”

He’s the first person in the family Percy tells about Audrey. He seems anxious about telling the rest, because the Weasleys may be the biggest blood-traitors in Britain, but they have yet to add a Muggle to the family. Bill gives his stamp of approval, because Percy looks like he needs it.

* * *

Victoire Nymphadora Tonks is born on the 2nd of May, and Bill doesn’t even realise because they have been in St. Mungo’s for seven hours of labour already the night before.

When he goes out of the delivery room to inform his parents that it’s a girl, every single one of his family are there. His parents are in a very in-depth conversation about baby clothes with Fleur’s parents, Percy and Hermione are discussing about politics by the look of Ron’s face, Harry is talking to an awe-struck Gabrielle, and Ginny is the first one to slam into him for a hug when he spots them all.

“You’re all here,” Bill says first, surprised, and Ginny scoffs at him.

Later, when they’ve gone in batches to go see Fleur and the baby, Bill finds George sitting by the water-cooler at the end of the corridor. He’s crying and Bill doesn’t think it’s about the miracle of life.

“I want to see the baby,” George says, when Bill asks what’s wrong.

Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Harry are cooing over the baby when Bill enters, but they see George trailing in after and they move to leave.

George clutches the baby to his chest, and says so quietly Bill almost misses it, “The anniversary. Of the Battle. It’s –”

Bill checks his watch, the one his father got him for his seventeenth birthday, and blinks. So it is.

There’s a rustling sound, and they both look over to see Fleur pulling out a piece of parchment from the baby bag next to the bed. She’s looking at it thoughtfully. “I know you liked Victoria, Bill, but it’s so _English_.”

It takes an embarrassingly long while to realise she’s looking at their baby list names, but he blames that on sleep deprivation. “Is there a French equivalent?”

Fleur scrunches up the parchment and throws it into the bin. It goes in, but it’s really not the time to admire her Quidditch skills. “I could get behind _Victoire_. It’s pretty.”

“Victoire,” Bill says, testing it out, and then nods. George rests his forehead against baby Victoire’s.

Charlie can’t make it from Romania until two days later, so when he Floos into their living room, bringing a pile of soot with him, he’s grinning broadly and travel-tired.

“Where’s my niece?” is the first thing he says and spends the next three hours marvelling over her.

“We were thinking of giving her the middle name Nymphadora,” Fleur brings up tentatively, watching Charlie cradling and making faces at Victoire.

Charlie looks up and over at Bill, who shrugs. “Fleur’s idea, but it feels right. I know she hated her first name and it’ll make Victoire’s full name a mouthful, but she would’ve found it funny, right?”

There are tears in Charlie’s eyes, because he’s always cried easy, but he’s also shaking his head with a smile. He misses his best friend. “She’d have fucking loved that.”

“_Language_,” Fleur chides, and he apologises. “I thought – Well. If you’d have wanted the name for your kids.”

“Charlie doesn’t want kids,” Bill says at the same time Charlie says, “No, thanks.”

“Victoire Nymphadora Weasley,” Charlie says, bumping the baby’s nose with his finger.

“Your mother will happy with it. She’s always wanted Tonks to be a Weasley,” Fleur adds, at their confused looks, and Charlie laughs so hard that he has to sit down.

It’s a moment Bill carries with him for a long time.


End file.
